In this strange story, Monica Ferris''s archdetective-by-accident, Betsy, seeks to escape her fate of detecting murderers
by attending a needlework gathering in the Far North, one March weekend (late winter still there). She is tired -- more spiritually and emotionally even than she is physically, exhausted. One of her friends calls her attention to the "stitch-in" at Naniboujou, a quaint, rustic lodge in northern Minnesota, near the Canadian border. The lodge is named after the Cree god of the outdoors; he is also the god of joy and peace. He has, however, a pronounced fondness for pranks. His image, laughing, is in the lodge. His presence makes the death and later disappearance of the body of the woman (she was supposed to be the surprise teacher of a couple of classes in needlework) even more terrible -- a violation of the very place, not just of society and the person -- a travesty of what the place was meant to be, and usually is. (There is such a place in reality -- they are credited with helping the author of this fictional story.) This is a story of
betrayal so deep, it leaves, and is the result of, everlasting scars. It is also a story of madness, although it is never phrased in those terms. It will leave you examining your own life and relationships, wondering if pain that deep (and its consequences) is always the result of ... betrayal -- or is it Fate?
This book also contains a free needlework pattern at the end.